Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Please let's not emulate FDR. Because my kids all need shoes.

When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933 when he took office to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower…Unemployment rose to 17 percent in 1938 and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent.

…But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the SEC, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes.

One wonders whether there’s still room for such monumental changes. One fears that there is.

Morris has a prediction, as well:

Obama's record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive.